LJ Interviews Kent McNall of Apropos

A talk with the head of a company using Informix SE for Linux in a point-of-sale application almost before it was announced.

Phil Hughes, my boss and publisher of
Linux Journal, talked to Kent McNall at the
Informix Conference held in Seattle in August. Being impressed with
the fact that Apropos was already using Informix for Linux in their
point-of-sale products on the day of the Informix announcement,
Phil suggested I interview Kent and find out how Apropos came to be
using Linux. I “talked” to Kent by e-mail on September 3.

Marjorie: Tell us a bit
about yourself.

Kent: I am the President of
Apropos Retail Management Systems of Lynnwood, WA. I'm 36 years
old, and I've been in the computer industry since age 20, when
(like Bill Gates) I dropped out of college to join the computer
revolution. Since my earliest days in this industry I have
gravitated towards multi-user business solutions on new-generation
platforms, primarily UNIX-based. I have also gravitated towards the
retail industry; the first software program I wrote was a
point-of-sale system.

During my career, I've worked with almost every type of PC
and PC operating system: CP/M, MP/M, many flavors of UNIX, Apple
II/III/Lisa/Mac, and every generation of IBM PC (including Junior).
I've worked with Novell and Windows
3/3.1/3.11/95/98/NT3.51/NT4.0.

After selling, installing and supporting systems for several
companies throughout the 1980s, I formed Apropos Retail Management
Systems in March of 1989 with my partners Sten Karlsen and Gary
Gill. Originally chartered as a general business systems provider,
we transformed the company into a software development company in
1992, developing enterprise-wide retail management solutions for
small- to mid-sized chain retailers. Our systems revolve around all
the most difficult tasks computers do for us today: wide area
networks, data synchronization and very large databases—all with a
requirement of 100% uptime from our clients.

Marjorie: What event first
brought Linux to your attention?

Kent: I have many associates
and acquaintances the world over who have met through the Internet.
Linux is extremely popular on the Internet. A friend of mine from
Poland brought it to my attention in 1996 when I was trying to
bring up a web server. He told me about Linux and Apache; I was off
and running.

Marjorie: What sort of
evaluation procedures helped you decide to use Linux as the
operating system of choice in your business?

Kent: The most important
evaluation criteria, to this day, is word of mouth. A lot of people
I know are using Linux in mission-critical, high-uptime
environments. A high percentage of the Internet is running on Linux
right now. Our own evaluation including testing, of course. We were
surprised at the degree of “off the shelf” compatibility that
Linux had. We expected to be very limited in the types of hardware
we could use, i.e., controllers, graphics cards, etc. Because we've
always been SCO users, we also needed to have compatibility with
SCO binaries, which the iBCS module provides. Compatibility is the
true acid test.

Marjorie: What advantages do
you see in using Linux? Disadvantages?

Kent: I admit that my
initial focus was on the cost advantages of Linux. The more I've
worked with the product, however, the more I'm impressed by all the
other advantages. Linux is truly compliant with the standards of
the industry; the advantage of being so new is that there is no
legacy “baggage” in the operating system. It was designed to
POSIX standards from the outset. It is the fastest Intel-based UNIX
I've ever seen. It is quite reliable. The support is
incredible—despite the fact that the paradigm of support is very
different and takes some getting used to. Most people wouldn't
expect 24x7x365 support for a free software product, but with
Linux, you have it. The Linux community is incredible. The biggest
advantage I see to Linux is that it will be a true alternative to
Windows NT on the Intel platform in the future. I don't see any
other operating system currently available that can make that
claim—not OS/2, and SCO is simply off track.

The disadvantage of Linux is in the polish. Some companies
are packaging Linux and doing a good job. The challenge is to keep
one of those companies from becoming dominant and setting us on an
SCO-type path of price inflation. One of the larger players has
already tried to put a $400 price tag on a packaged Linux—BOO! The
free, downloadable Linux needs more polish. It also goes without
saying that the software development community must develop
software compatible with Linux and the standards Linux
represents.

Marjorie: What do you find
most attractive about Linux?

Kent: I guess I'm a
rebel—but I like the feeling that I'll have an option other than
Windows NT in five years. After that, it is price—I'm a software
developer and reseller. A free operating system is just the ticket
for my customers.

Frankly, I think operating systems should have been free a
long time ago. Linux is blazing the trail in this area, and I hope
it brings price pressure on the rest of the industry. I also very
much like the fact that Linux is so rock-solid and reliable—a true
enterprise-class operating system.

Marjorie: How do you think
Linux compares with other operating systems?

Kent: As a UNIX compared to
other UNIX operating systems on Intel platforms, Linux is less
expensive, faster, more open and more compliant to standards than
any UNIX I know of. It is also less “polished”, as I've said.
Linux has a brighter future than any other UNIX I could name. Linux
has a much broader user-support base than any other UNIX, and it
also has more industry support, particularly on the Internet side.
Although hard numbers are not easy to come by, I think there is
little doubt that far more Linux has been deployed in the past two
or three years than any other version of UNIX. Remember, my main
perspective is that of a “greedy” businessman—I can't give you
the bit-by-bit lowdown on technical differences.

As compared to NT, don't get me started. I have found NT to
be unreliable with even relatively small (50MB and less) databases.
Linux is totally reliable with these databases. Linux is fast—I
could easily put 30 to 40 users on a Pentium-based Linux system
with a database application. That same box would die an ugly death
after running NT. We rarely reboot a Linux system; we are
constantly rebooting NT systems. Certainly any time a configuration
change is made, NT has to be rebooted. Almost any type of hardware
can be dynamically linked to a Linux system on the fly—it is
amazing how often we actually do this. Our Linux web server has
been up for eight months. We rebooted our corporate NT server 12
times last week (I just looked).

I mentioned before that I'm a rebel—but in reality, every IS
professional I've talked to tells this same story about NT versus
UNIX or Linux servers, database servers and mission-critical
applications. It is amazing how powerful Microsoft's marketing arm
is.

I do have to mention the GUI interfaces on Linux; like the
operating system and installation portions of Linux, they are not
as polished as the MS Windows interfaces. I've seen some really
nice X implementations for Linux, but it is still too hard for the
average user to get there. This is a part of the polish that needs
to happen with Linux.

Marjorie: What do you think
needs to be added to Linux to make it more attractive to business
users?

Kent: Again, we get back to
the polish. Installation needs to be as easy (or easier) than NT,
with more automatic sensing of installed components. Business users
need to able to order their servers preconfigured with Linux. I
predict that companies such as Dell and Gateway will be offering
this within a year. Business users need a high level of comfort
with support and service behind their operating system. Linux needs
to be invisible as a server operating system—and this is certainly
the case now.
Marjorie: Did
you or Informix initiate the idea of a Linux port? If it was you,
how did you go about convincing Informix that they needed to port
to Linux?

Kent: There had been
pressure on Informix for a long time to port to Linux, and by no
means do I take more than one voice's credit for getting Informix
to do an actual port. Much of the pressure came from the
International Informix Users Group and the Informix Users Group; it
has been a major topic of conversation on the Informix newsgroup
threads for a very long time. I do believe that a lot of the
pressure on Informix was perceived by Informix executives as coming
from the “hacker” community, which was incorrect—but let's face
it, Linux has been perceived in that light for some time. However,
that is changing. When I started putting pressure on Informix last
year, I did turn up the heat a bit—I bent every ear I could,
including Bob Finocchio's in December. I talked with them about the
business case for Linux—I have the competitive edge when my
operating system is free and my competitor is selling a $1200 copy
of NT. When I'm trying to sell an Informix/Apropos system to a
200-store retailer, that's a lot of money. I also tried to convince
them that the other major database players were not asleep and
would eventually port to Linux, which has certainly turned out to
be true—but Informix has beaten the competition by months with
their Linux port.

I give Informix all the credit in the world for listening to
their customers. Informix is a great business partner, period. I
also applaud the IIUG for their patience in working with Informix
to get this port done—this is their victory. We are showing
support for Informix in the only way it really counts—we've
ordered our first Informix SE licenses for Linux!

Marjorie: Tell us all about
your Apropos product. How does it use Informix and Linux?

Kent: Apropos is an
enterprise-wide software system for chain retailers. If you were a
retailer with 150 stores, you would call Apropos for a total
solution, from point-of-sale to your corporate office. Our offering
is very unique in that the entire system is based on a database
(Informix), and written in a 4GL language (Informix Dynamic 4GL).
Our product line also includes complete Data Warehousing, for which
we utilize the Informix Metacube product. You can see that our
partnership with Informix is truly a foundation of our business. A
new product we're offering is the Apropos Retail
Intranet—retailers absolutely love this part of the product. Some
of our customers are Esprit de Corp of San Francisco, bebe of San
Francisco, Pro Golf Discount and Intrawest, which runs such resorts
as Whistler/Blackcomb, Mammoth Mountain and Mount Tremblant in
Quebec.

The in-store server for a retail store has traditionally been
SCO UNIX, running an Informix SE database engine. We can now
install a Linux server at a fraction of the cost. A typical store
will have our POS application running on Informix and will also use
the Netscape Communicator browser for the Apropos Intranet. With
Linux, even a single-station store can have the total reliability
of a Linux-based application with the Netscape graphical interface
on the same station.

Marjorie: What type of
business is most likely to need Apropos?

Kent: Chain retail, strictly
chain retail. Many of our clients also have e-commerce sites or
mail order, but usually in conjunction with their retail
operations.

Marjorie: Do you support
other operating systems with Apropos?

Kent: Yes. We support SCO
UNIX, HP/UX, IBM AIX, Windows NT and MS Windows desktop operating
systems. Windows NT will run Informix, and we currently use it as a
file/print server and for a small data warehouse. I would point out
that we have made a significant investment in Windows NT over the
past four years and have two Microsoft-certified professionals and
MCSE candidates on staff, including myself.

Marjorie: Have you
considered making Apropos Open Source?

Kent: Our database is
already open and always has been, and we freely distribute the
documentation for our data model. There is not a lot of demand from
our client base for our software to be open source.

Marjorie: Have all of your
products been ported to Linux? If not, why not?

Kent: All of our products
with the exception of the data warehouse have been ported to Linux.
The reason we haven't ported the data warehouse is that Metacube
requires the Informix Online Dynamic Server, which hasn't been
ported yet (hint hint).

Marjorie: What advice would
you give others who would like to convince companies to port their
products to Linux?

Kent: Make a case for Linux
in a way that business people can understand—dollars and cents. As
the case for Linux builds in the systems community, it will be
easier to gather information that shows the demand for Linux and
the growing user base out there. I believe it is self-evident that
the world does not want to be stuck with one operating system—and
it is equally self-evident that Linux will be a player in the
future. Many software companies and their executives will recognize
this fact and respond to it by porting their products and
developing new products that adhere to international open
standards. Linux makes business sense. Sharp business people will
see this.

Marjorie: What do you see in
the future for Apropos/Linux/Informix?

Kent: At Apropos, we feel we
are perfectly positioned for the future. Our software applications
are totally Y2K-compliant; we are built on open systems standards
from start to finish. We believe in our technology and our
technology partners, particularly Informix and the Linux community.
We are very close to our customers, uniquely so—and our customers
are very successful companies. We will continue to build the best
retail software in the industry on the best platforms. We'll
continue our commitment to customer service. If you have good
products and are committed to customer service, you are not going
to go wrong. That's why Informix has come through a tough year very
well, and it is why Apropos continues to be successful.

I see a very bright future for Linux. I think the train is
just starting to pick up steam. As Microsoft continues to have
problems because of their unfair business practices, people will
start to notice something strange about the old emperor, at least
in the area of enterprise-class operating systems. They'll want
alternatives. System OEM's will want to offer alternatives to their
customers. Software developers will continue to catch the Linux
wave. I personally find it very exciting, and I'm having a lot of
fun watching it unfold. The fact that I can save my customers money
and make more money for my business at the same time is
great.

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